Strange Loop

September 26-28 2018

Stifel Theatre

St. Louis, MO

Finding a way out

I have a basic premise: we didn’t nail programming 40 years ago. Instead, I believe there’s something different waiting for us out there, something better. And while people like Alan Kay and Charles Simonyi have been hinting at it for decades, we're still here with our text editors desperately trying to gain insight into the twisted messes we’ve created. For the longest time we've gained power at the cost of complexity, but at some point we have to find our way out of the maze. A new language isn’t enough. Even new tools like Light Table only suggest a path forward. To truly escape, we have to take a step back and re-imagine what it means to create software. We have to let go and ask ourselves – what would programming look like if we created it today?

Chris Granger

Kodowa

I grew up as part of the nintendo generation, having learned the parts of a computer at the age of two and later learning numbers and colors from a Sesame Street game on the NES. I started programming at the age of ten and took my first paid development gig at 17. Since then I’ve built websites large and small, written frameworks and libraries used by thousands, taught developers around the world, and helped envision the future of development at Microsoft. These days, I’m the co-founder and CEO of Kodowa, where we’re building Light Table, a new vision for how we create and learn.